Platform flow

Introduction

locuaz takes one or more docked target-binder complexes and performs mutations on user selected binder sequences. These subsequent mutations are performed simultaneously to evaluate the vicinity of the solution landscape, and sequentially to advance in the optimization process. Simultaneous mutations give rise to branches, which all together compose an epoch.

The initial complex(es) is(are) used to create the initial branches, which belong to the epoch 0. A full branch includes:

  • Complex files: the complex structure (.pdb and .gro), index file (.ndx) and a topology (in a .zip file).

  • Minimization files: all files generated from the minimization run, prefixed by min_

  • NVT files: all files generated from the NVT run, prefixed by nvt_

  • NPT files: all files generated from the NPT run, prefixed by npt_

  • A scoring folder with the affinity scores for each frame, from each scorer.

  • Other miscellaneous files: leftover files from the mutation process Tleap script, if used, etc…

A locuaz project is made of these branches, as can be seen on Figure 1.

workdir

Figure 1: project directory for the optimization of an antibody’s 3 CDRs. Each folder corresponds to an branch. The one from epoch 0 is highlighted. branches are identified by the residues that are being optimized and the chainID they correspond to. branches names are prepended by the epoch they belong to. So, the initial complex begins with 0- and then 3 sequences (all belonging to chainID B) are identified by their 1-letter coded amino acids, these are the CDRs.

While Figure 1 shows how the a locuaz project is actually laid out, we don’t think about epochs and branches as a plain list, but as nodes of a tree or, more correctly, a Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG).

Note

You may have noticed the files d11.log and tracking.pkl. The first one is, as indicated by its extension, a log file that locuaz writes out to update the user on the state of the run. tracking.pkl on the other hand, is not made to be read by the user and it’s just a file that locuaz uses to store temporary information on the run in case it needs to restart it later.

Platform DAGs

Variable width DAG

Figure 2 shows how we think of a usual locuaz run. From a docked complex locuaz creates our first branch which we’ll name A0, given that’s the first branch from epoch 0. Then, the binder is mutated and, in this particular case, the user asked for 2 new branches to be generated. The edge that joins the branches (nodes) represent this step.

Now, after scoring the branches A1 and B1, the protocol finds that A1’s mutation wasn’t beneficial and hence discards it to continue the protocol from B1, the top branch from epoch 1. The process continues, and we see that on epoch 2 both mutants had improved affinity and now 4 parallel branches were evaluated on epoch 3, of which 1 failed to improve affinity (C3), leaving 3 branches to be twicely mutated to generate epoch 4 with 6 branches. These are shown in gray given that are not yet finished.

workflow

Figure 2: DAG of a hypothetical run. The current epoch is the fourth one. The current top branches are highlighted in green and gave origin to the current all branches which are being still run. Previous top branches are in pale green while the branches that failed to improve the affinity are noted as failed branches (pale pink).

Constant width DAG

Finally, we can see how the DAG would look like if the user selects a constant width run. This prevents the number of simultaneous branches from exploding, but it does limit the number of potential solutions that are explored.

workflow

Figure 3: same system as the one from Figure 1, but this time the user selected a constant width, so the number of branches is the number of branches that are run at each epoch.

Summary

locuaz works by extending this DAG. Its shape will be decided by the user configuration and the results of the optimization process. And while we skipped over several important details during the previous explanation, on the next section we’ll take a look at each functional block that takes care of each step such as mutation, molecular dynamics, scoring, etc…